Originally Posted by
LFJ
Keep in mind, Luohan Shiba Shou as a name is as common as styles being named after Damo. It doesn't necessarily mean anything, except that it is obviously Buddhist/Shaolin related!
Don't mix up the courtyard styles. The Xiyuan and Nanyuan Tongbiquan aren't just different versions of the same system. They have different origins. The one likely to be related to General Han Tong's Tongbiquan is the Xiyuan system, which being older is a bit scattered and also has many different names.
Nanyuan Tongbiquan is a lot easier to follow, as it is not so old. It is basically Dong Cheng's Tongbiquan, a mixture of the Shaolinquan he got from students of Bai Yufeng (Taizu Changquan, Hongquan, Paoquan) and Yuanhouquan, and later (Datongbiquan) Ji Jike's Xinyi rooster concepts. This is between the mid 1500's to the final years of the Ming Dynasty in the mid 1600's. We can know this by looking at the contents of the material and when and where it was created and taught.
Luohan Shiba Shou yilu as described is mainly Nanyuan Datongbiquan technique. Other roads are more Xiaotongbiquan. As both of these came from outside created in the late Ming Dynasty, it doesn't make sense for the same technique base to have been created within Shaolin centuries earlier. This Luohan Shiba Shou series at the earliest may be placed somewhere between Nanyuan Xiaotongbiquan and Datongbiquan.
Also, I wouldn't suggest taking instructional videos as reference for history! Shi Deyang basically just repeats common Shaolin legends in the videos, rather than discussing factual history. In most cases it is pretty easy to debunk the legends with a little research.
Someone I know asked Shi Xingsen (who is in some Liu Zhenhai instructionals) why the sets they show differ in the videos and books they made. He said the books are often more accurate because people who are really serious will look to books for research purposes. The videos in most cases are just for hobbyists, so they just have watered-downed versions of the sets with a word or two of basic legends for the "formation".
By the way, in Shi Deqian's individual book on this Luohan Shiba Shou series he gives quite a different story on the origin of the name which isn't about statues. If there is a much older Shaolin Luohan Shiba Shou system, this can't be it. It's Nanyuan Tongbiquan all the way through.